While there seems to be a lot of respect for John McCain, as evidenced by one reader’s comment on the previous post, he has done an admirable job of beating the war drums and completely modifying many of his previously held positions on many subjects, including the power and influence held and exercised by Washington lobbyists and controversial subjects such as torture. It seems he is making an all out effort to appease everyone across the board.

Barack Obama has also done some of this, but I find his response to the Iran missile tests a little more comforting and hopeful, in that should he be elected, we might find the US once again acting as a part of the international community. Here is his response:

Sen. Barack Obama: “Part of what we have to do is get the Europeans, the Chinese, the Russians, all to recognize that it’s in nobody’s interests, including Iran’s, I believe, to have a nuclear weapon that could trigger a nuclear arms race in the region. And that’s something that I intend to make a number one priority when I’m in the White House, making sure they don’t have that nuclear capability.”

Sen. John McCain: “It’s time for action. And it’s time to make the Iranians understand that this kind of violation of international treaties, this kind of threatening of their neighbors, this kind of continued military activity, is
not without cost.”

After Iran’s recent long-range missile tests, presumably in response to all the Bush government rhetoric about that evil country’s presumed intentions, Republican presidential candidate John McCain came up with this convincing response.

Hmm. Let’s see. What if we inserted another world leader as the author of the quote, referring to (gasp!) the United States?

Violation of international treaties… Geneva anyone? Others include:

• Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV)
• U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3314
• Nuremberg Tribunal Charter
• 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention

Threatening their neighbors…. how about countries all around the globe, from Latin America to Asia to ?

Continuing military activity… Iraq, Chile, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Grenada, Haiti, Fiji, Liberia, Chad, South Korea…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24958259/

Above, is what set me off this morning! Sorry to all my gringo readers, it must seem like I am picking on y’all.

Is it possible that the USA is becoming more diplomatic?

After directly invading Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, Vietnam, et al., and directly getting involved with the internal politics of countless nations, it seems the USA is getting diplomatic in the case of Burma aka Myanmar.

The military junta that ‘rules’ this unfortunate group of human beings that were cursed only by the locations of their mother’s vagina when they emerged onto the scene, has denied most foreign aid organizations access to the country to provide emergency help in the form of food, supplies, medicines and doctors; all those things that post-hurricane would be so very helpful in helping people actually NOT DIE.

The USA deemed that it somehow needed permission on this occasion to ‘invade’ yet another country with whom they are in disagreement and having been denied it, is retiring it’s help-laden ships from the coastline in front of Burma aka Myanmar.

Imagine how the world’s opinion of the USA in general and the little man at the top himself could have been positively affected had there been a literal ‘invasion’ of food, medicine and supplies by the USA, overriding the idiots in charge in Burma and to actually save the lives of those that are suffering. Supplies, food and medicines, nothing else. No soldiers, no people on the ground.

Instead, they are asking permission to an internationally despised military junta. What – this junta has weapons of mass destruction and might actually use them? Or is the fact that there is no known oil reserve there that will warrant such an incursion, however humanitarian? Now that the junta has said no and again no, the generals and admirals and L’il Georgie shrug their shoulders and say ‘gee we really wanted to help, but they won’t let us”.

This is so pathetic it makes me sick. Diplomatic indeed. Whatever happened to the shining beacon on the hill, the leader of the free world. Pathetic pathetic pathetic.

That NotTheNews occasionally dabbles in foreign affairs is not new; this particular entry takes a glimpse at the contenders for the US presidential race, the results of which will assuredly affect everyone around the globe, as much as George W. Bush has negatively affected the world in the eight years he has been undermining any chance of international goodwill towards the United States by the rest of the citizens of the beleaguered planet.

Talk about your run-on sentences. And I write this knowing full well that there will be at least one reader who disagrees with me on some of this.

For purposes of clarification: NotTheNews is atheist, does not support the Republicans at any time and is generally wary of all American foreign policy; military, economic or political, seeing that for the most part, they have proven to be destructive and poorly thought out.

Barack H. Obama – The official candidate of the NotTheNews editorial team; his recent declarations deploring the Reverend Jeremiah Wright for ‘inflammatory’ statements selected carefully and with malicious intent from by the US corporate media are, in the opinion of the afore-mentioned NotTheNews editorial team, a blatant sellout to the brainless sector of American society that cannot think for themselves beyond the 5 second sound bite and take offense at the Reverend’s words.

In the humble and completely irrelevant opinion of this writer, the fact that Sen. Obama has to pander to the ignorant instead of standing up for free speech and perhaps even inviting the American public to take a closer look at what the Reverend said, in what context and how much of it may be – however remotely and however unpopular – close to the view held by many of the citizens of the world. The truth hurts, the American public in general can not face it (there’s another sale at Macy’s!!!) and Obama has cheapened his position in siding with the sheep in this case.

Hillary R. Clinton – The second choice of the NotTheNews team, the senator from New York who never lived there much has blown her chance of any endorsement by this website by declaring recently that if Israel was attacked by Iran, she would ‘obliterate’ the latter. To make such an irresponsible statement when you have two unpopular presidents – el loco Bush in the US and el loco Ahmadinejad in Iran – rattling those proverbial sabers, is pandering to the macho element in American society who still believe that a woman cannot be strong militarily. Being as ignorant as many are of international politics, perhaps they have never heard of Margaret Thatcher. In any case, more than for reasons of pandering to the thick-necked, thick skulled, NRA membership, the comment by la Hillary is downright dangerous and will surely make Americans even more popular abroad. It also reinforces this writer’s idea that Hillary is just another old, white American business-as-usual politician who will continue with the same America First policies, the rest of the world be damned, that have characterized American foreign policy since the Spanish-American war.

John McCain – While the Democrats fight amongst themselves, this Republican former ‘maverick’ who ran against Bush in 2000 has, in some sort of Frankenstein-sells-off-parts-of-himself process, become another person altogether, completely at odds with his former, thinking self. Where he was once against torture (having endured it as a POW himself) he now supports all those delightful tactics that Rumsfeld, Cheney et al have come to call ‘aggressive interrogation’ methods, including the charming activity known as water-boarding or simulated drowning. He is all for the war and has declared that the US could be in Iraq for the next 100 years. Back in 2000, he openly opposed the idiots on the fundamentalist religious right; now he has pandered (there’s that word again) to them by seeking and obtaining – among other lunatics in that vein – the Rev. Hageys endorsement.
In short, McCain is now a Bush/Cheney clone, has seen the light ($$) and has sold out big time.

The conclusion is that so far, in order to reach as many possible voters as possible, all the candidates have taken positions that they were perhaps originally less than eager to embrace, all in the name of getting more votes. And the common denominator seems to be the lack of intelligence among the majority of the American electorate who have been shielded from any real discussion about the effect of US policy on the rest of the world, or indeed, of their own history. And so, each candidate ‘dumbs down’ his position, watering it down, chewing and re-chewing until it becomes palatable and digestible to the infants charged with electing their next glorious leader.

All the rest of the world can do is watch. And hope.

Link: Bill Moyers on Rev J. Wright